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A Premier League footballer who has been banned from the game for 13 months for breaching betting regulations may seem an unlikely champion of the UK’s anti-gambling lobby, but Joey Barton has never been one to follow the straightforward path.

Earlier this year, Barton was suspended from football after he admitted placing more than 1,200 bets over a 10-year period. At least five of the bets were made on matches in which he was playing.

In a lengthy statement, Barton said the sport’s governing bodies “need to accept there is a huge clash between their rules and the culture that surrounds the modern game, where anyone who watches football on TV or in the stadia is bombarded by marketing, advertising...